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EAST ST. LOUIS "FROM 1926 ON"
Anaheim, California Dear Rube, I hope you don't mind my using your first name but I feel that I have known you for years after reading East St. Louis, The Way It Is. I know it the way it was, from about 1926 on. A friend of mine, Walter Boyne, who now lives in Reston, Virginia, sent me a copy of your book several weeks ago, and my mind has been in a regular ferment ever since. (You may remember a brother of his - Bill Boyne - who preceded you as editor of The Journal) Tears came to my eyes several times as I looked once again at the scenes of my childhood. I came to East St. Louis earlier than most of the figures in your book and lived in the "South End" until I went out with the 33rd Division Illinois National Guard in March 1941. We drilled on Thursday evenings at the Ainad Temple and camped out in the basement for a week as we readied ourselves to leave for active duty at Camp Forrest, Tennessee. A FEARSOME COMBINATION I am the eldest of the "Carr Boys," as we were known in the South End. (We were a fearsome combination in the almost daily street fights we endured among ourselves and the blacks.) My brother Rex, whom you mention in your book, still lives in the area, and I have kept in touch at intervals as I visit him. My wife, Hallie, worked for the Journal through World War 11 as a copyholder - whatever that is. I used to meet her and go through the print room in 1946, waiting for her to get off work. It is a real item of nostalgia to learn that my brother uses it for storage now. My latest visit was in 1987 when I attended the 50th anniversary of my graduation from "East Side High" as we termed it. (I still remember walking home from the ceremonies in my first suit, cut down from an old one of my uncle's, and hearing the coins rapping on the windows as I walked down Seventh Street through the redlight district.) We drove on a chartered bus to the vacant lot where Rock Jr. used to be and I was amazed that no one dared to leave the bus. I rented a car later and drove all over the area and into the South End without a bit of trouble. People were very friendly when they found that I used to live there. I lived all over the South End and your book brought back mernories: the corner of Eleventh and Piggott across from the Washington School where my brothers went, Brennan's Drug Store, Ruth Taylor's confectionery where I picked up the Journal, The Post Dispatch and the Star for my paper route which covered the whole area including Rush City, a collection of shacks across the Illinois Central "hump," where my dad, who was an engineer on that railroad, let me ride the locomotive as he switched railroad cars. I spent many years at 1028 Piggott and it is all gone. A freeway approach wiped out everything but the school. I went to Franklin School at Seventh and Bond - between Bond and Market. (You had no picture of my old school.) It is gone, and the Southern Pacific tracks are rusty. They went right behind the two-story house I lived in at Eighth and Bond, and a junior college occupies roughly the area where the school and Franklin Park used to be. I also lived across from Brenner's Market at Eighth and Bond, in a green house at Eighth and Market, and for a number of years in a two-story commercial building at Tenth and Bond, right across from the Methodist Church. My mother had a rummage store there and Aso collected radios for my brother Eugene to repair. Rex was only a child there.Tenth Street was a main artery - I believe it was Route 66 -for traffic across the country and served as my way to get to high school. I rode the back of trucks. I used to come out of school, walk to Tenth and State and catch a ride for home on a truck. They always had to slow down as they went up the approach to the "Free Bridge," (no toll to walk) and I hopped off only a couple of blocks from home. Sometimes they went too fast and -1 had to wait until they slowed at the toll booths near St. Louis a long walk back. (Many times I have walked all the way from the foot of the Eads Bridge in St. Louis, across the redlight district on the waterfront, to the Free Bridge. and across because I lost that last precious nickel to the insidious crane machine on the excursion boat. (Eads Bridge cost a nickel to walk across.)PARADISE FOR A BOY I met my wife in 1937 when she was 13 and lived at Eleventh and Baker over Eberhardt's Shoe Store, right across from Kratzmeyer's and Rochelle's grocery store. It is only a vacant lot now, overgrown with weeds. I was attending Summer's College of Commerce on the second floor just off Main and Broadway, where I worked as a custodian to earn my tuition. (I was the fastest typist in the school - 90 words a minute - and only three boys in with what seemed like hundred of girls; it was paradise.) Somewhere around that time, I also worked for Merker's Drug Store at the comer of Broadway and Main, and remember selling cigarettes and sodas to the notorious Shelton gang who lived above in Reubel's boarding house. They had a private entrance into the store. (Some years later, all but one brother was killed by a long-distance sniper down in the Herrin area.) Charles Merrit's story of getting coal from the Illinois Central roundhouse reminded that some years before him I was doing the same thing. We would get a meatpacking box and mount it on steel wheelbarrow wheels, nail a tongue with movable wheels in front and steer with a rope. We had one with which to collect old bottles, iron, copper, etc. Also, we kept warm in winter by going down to the roundhouse where the crane operator loading tenders would "'accidentally" drop coal by the side of the tracks, and a gang of us would scurry over with our "toe" sacks - we didn't, however, sell it; it was for survival. (Later, at Eighth and Bond, we would hop on the coal cars going by right behind the house and throw off large lumps of coal along the right of way. This was good training for a later time when a friend and I would travel on freight trains all over the Southwest.
BREWERY AND BUTTERMILK I also worked at the Royal Six Brewery - later Lemp - for $9 a week and all the beer I could drink. I got MY Social Security card there. And my dad and I worked up a free-lance buttermilk route, selling milk we got from Neiderer's Dairy in Lansdowne. We sold to blacks mostly all the way to 37th Street and into Rush City. I have gone to Jones' Park many times, although I remember a loose, small white rock bottom in the swimming pool instead of concrete. I also swam in Pittsburgh Lake, although I really learned to swim earlier in the Mississippi. We would hike down along Cahokia Creek, coming out not too far from the power plant and swim out from that funny gate in the levee you show in your book. I hate to think of how filthy the water was in those days. That was also a favorite lover's lane. My mind is in a ferment over your book. I never foresaw the distance - both literal and spiritual - that I would travel over the years. The GI Bill enabled me to get my Master's and almost a PhD from Washington University and I taught English for 10 years at the high school in Alton, also at the SIU Residence Center there. In 1962, I moved to Anaheim, not fir from Disneyland, and taught until 1984 at Santa Ana College in Santa Ana, California when I retired. I have a house, an orange tree, and a pool. The world of the South End seems as faraway as Mars. I still read a lot - a practice I honed at the old public library, loading up my bicycle every Saturday. Finally, I don't exactly know why I have unburdened my soul to you like this. It may be that I am sure we are kindred souls, sharing a love for the home of our childhoods. I have many fond memories - seeing the disc jockey in the newly-built Broadview actually playing the records I had heard in my shed clubhouse at 1028 Piggott on my crystal radio or the magnificent restrooms at the Majestic Theatre -overwhelming after attending the old Liberty for 5 cents or the Avenue for 20 cents. (Rex, with his million-dollar income, once worked asan usher at the Majestic) But enough. You did invite letters, didn't you? In fond Remembrence, Loyd Carr
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